I first heard about Active Collections, edited by Elizabeth Wood, Rainey Tisdale, and Trevor Jones, at a few of the virtual conferences I attended last year, and then later by a Collections professional who spoke to my Museum Studies class in the spring, and every presentation that centered around "We read Active Collections and incorporated it into our work" was absolutely eye-opening to me. The way the presenters spoke about the book and their new ways of working based on it was just... against everything I'd learned doing collections, but sounded so groundbreaking and inspirational. I was both aghast and intrigued.
To start, essays here come from a range of disciplines, not just collections: there are historical aspects, psychological ("Why do we hoard? Why do we find it difficult to get rid of things?"), decolonization, consumerism, climate change... some things you might have realized on your own and things you might have never thought about before.
The foreword prepares you that the essays will show how the field is "rethinking collections issues" and tells the reader that "we need flexible and practical solutions to managing collections" (xvii). And some of the rethinking is also reimagining and re-envisioning, and really does need to include a warning: there are some really creative and new ways of rethinking how to use your collection, including making objects available for being disassembled and studied or used to create new pieces of art. ("What?!? You want me to let people take apart artifacts?? You want me to give them away?? Are you insane?!?") But the whole point is if you have these objects, but you're not displaying them or using them to teach your audience, or they're not in good enough condition to display, then they're just stuff taking up space in some room that no one will ever see. And we have too much Stuff That No One Is Seeing Or Using, and it's costing us money and hurting the environment, so it's time to rethink what we do with that stuff.
The upsides (including my favorite essays):
- "Tier Your Collections: A Practical Tool for Making Clear Decisions in Collections Management" [I loved this! A how-to for prioritizing your objects.]
- "Object Reincarnation: Imagining a Future Outside the Permanent Collection" [Freaky ideas! Totally go against our traditional thinking about preserving objects]
- "Do You Know What It Costs You to Collect?" [Use data and hard facts of money and budgets to show that we can't save everything!]
- "Hoarding and Museum Collections: Conceptual Similarities and Differences"
- "The Vital Museum Collection"
- "Activate Your Collection: 51 Questions to Reveal Inactivity"
- A number of the essays talk about the meaning of objects and trying to document their meanings. ("What?? Document meanings?! How?!? And that doesn't fit into our current dimensions/material/creator scheme of record-keeping!")
- I really liked the ideas a few of the authors had about having community/communal collections, working with other museums or organizations so you're not all collecting the same thing. Does each museum in the county need a 19th century tea kettle, or can just one have it and loan it to the other museums when they need a 19th century tea kettle to display or photograph? Of course, with that comes the implication that we're in contact with a network of museums, whether that's the museums in our community or museums that have a similar focus to ours. So these new methods of collecting and managing collections will require new ways of working, both within and outside of our own organizations... but that's kind of an invigorating idea, too!
- I also tried to incorporate some of these ideas while cleaning/reorganizing/downsizing this summer: "I don't know the provenance of these posters (Where did I get them? When? Did someone give them to me? What's the story behind them?) and they're 10-year-old schedules of sports teams, so do I really need to keep them? Nope, recycle." "Do I *really* need 4 of those mugs from a drink-mix product?" (Okay, I failed at getting rid of the extra mugs [so far] because they're so adorable, but I at least thought about it!)
The downsides:
- So many bad habits to break! Wait... that's not a downside of the book; that's a downside of me!
Overall: I really appreciated this book -- the essays have so many new and good ideas, and eye-opening ways to look at collections, collecting, how we interact with our audiences, and how we let our audiences interact with our collections.
Envisioning overcrowded and overflowing collections storage spaces, and thinking about statistics that say museums only display 2-10% of their collection, we know that our collections need help, and that our collections management practices need to be retooled. We can't accept every item offered to us, and we can't keep every item for all of time. We have to say no, we have to deaccession, we have to find creative ways to make use of the items we're not using; we can't keep doing things the way they've always been done. Otherwise, we're going to drown in seas of archival storage boxes.
In theory, I'm on board. Rationally, I know we can't care for Everything Ever: weed out items, keep a few examples but not every example, keep the collection relevant, etc. When I try to imagine actually doing it, though, my scenario goes to "But I like having one of everything! I like seeing the evolution of objects!" If I'm ever in a position again where I have control over and responsibility for a collection, I'm going to take the advice and tips in Active Collections to heart, but I'll have to go through a deep-in-my-soul process of breaking some habits.
